Daniel Gross

Friday’s Economic Data Dump Wasn’t All Bad News

There's more to economic data than the jobless numbers. And on a day like today, thank heavens that's the case. The awful May jobs payroll report dominated headlines, drove the political narrative and caused stocks to fall by about two percent on Friday. The number — 69,000 jobs created — was uncomfortably close to zero and quickly led many analysts to claim the U.S. economy was approaching stall speed.

But there was plenty of other news to digest. It was all pretty much non-tragic. Some of it was even good.

At 8:30 a.m., the same instant that the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered the buzzkill jobs report, the Commerce Department reported on personal income and spending for April. The result: Personal income rose .2 percent in April from March, and the March figure was revised upward to a gain of .4 percent. The savings rate dipped down to 3.4 percent. In other words, in April, Americans earned more than they did in March, and they spent a higher chunk of those earnings than they did in March.

Signs of Growth

Construction spending rose .3 percent in April from March, and was up 6.8 percent from April 2011, led by a strong increase in residential construction spending.

Later in the morning, the Institute for Supply Management published its May report on manufacturing business. Any reading over 50 indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector. It came in at 53.5, down from 54.8 in April, but still solidly in positive territory. The new orders component of the index rose significantly.

Throughout the day, auto sales trickled in. Auto sales are an extremely important metric. Cars are the biggest retail industry and the biggest manufacturing industry in the U.S. They represent big-ticket purchases that require the extension of significant credit. And by and large, the figures for May 2012 were positive. Chrysler reported that sales were up 30 percent from a year ago, while GM's sales rose 13 percent and Ford's rose 11 percent. Foreign-based auto companies staged even more dramatic increases. Toyota's sales were up 90 percent in May 2012 from May 2011 (a month in which its sales were heavily impacted by the tsunami), while Honda's rose 47 percent. It's likely the pace of car sales in May from April.

Construction spending, income, and car sales all speak to real, measurable activity in the economy. The data are all consistent with growth — not impressive growth, but growth nonetheless. Macroeconomic Advisers, which plugs every bit of new incoming data into its existing model and continually updates its projections, said today that, after the flurry of data this week, it believes the U.S. economy is growing at a 2.4 percent rate in the current quarter. That's faster than the rate of growth in the first quarter.

So, yes, the jobs number was poor. And it shouldn't be ignored. There is a crisis of unemployment in this country and our policymakers aren't doing anything about it. But the jobs report was something of an outlier among Friday's flurry of economic data. In and of itself, the addition of 69,000 jobs in a month does not signify that the economy has lost the capacity to grow, or even that it's slowing down.

Recommended for You

Thinkstock In 2015, the Internal Revenue Service audited only 0.84% of all individual tax returns. So the odds are generally pretty low that your return will be picked for review. That said, your chances ...

Retirement investing is not what it used to be. The problem with the Federal Reserve's attempt to goose the economy is that it killed bond yields, forcing retired investors further out onto the risk curve, making it difficult to find safe stocks to buy.

Dec.08 -- Taiwan is again a potential flashpoint in U.S-China relations, after Donald Trump broke protocol by talking with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. Taipei is also re-asserting its claim over contested territory in the South China Sea. Bloomberg's Stephen Engle reports from Taiping in the Spratly Islands.

U.S. home values rose again in October, and a handful of states reported increases exceeded the national average. Housing prices increased 6.7 percent in October compared to the same month a year ago, ...

Conventional wisdom dispensed by financial planners about taking Social Security largely boils down to this: Wait as long as you can. Forty-eight percent of women and 42 percent of men who claimed benefits in 2013 did so at 62, which is the most popular age to start getting Social Security. Part of the reason is that, in some circumstances, waiting simply doesn’t make sense, “The decision on when to start Social Security depends on factors such as how long you expect to live, cash flow needs and marital status,” says Daniel Galli, a certified financial planner in Norwell, Massachusetts.

Another day of all-time highs across the major indices (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC, ^RUT), with the health care (XLV) sector leading the way up, but financials (XLF) still languishing in the red. Alan Valdes, director of floor operations at Silverbear joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange. To discuss big stories of the day, Alexis Christoforous is joined by Yahoo Finance’s Jen Rogers and Melody Hahm. Mark Zuckerberg is under scrutiny after recently unsealed court documents reveal he may have had inappropriate communication with fellow Facebook board member Marc Andreessen.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Shares in troubled Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena plunged Friday following news reports that the bank's request for more time to raise new capital from investors had been rejected by regulators. But the bank said it hadn't received official notification and was planning to hold another board meeting on Sunday.

General Electric Co. said Friday that it raised its quarterly dividend by 4.3% to 24 cents a share from 23 cents a share. The new dividend will be payable Jan. 25 to shareholders of record on Dec. 27. ...

After prolonged debate, Congress recently passed a $1 billion bill including funds to combat a rampant epidemic of opioid and heroin addiction in practically every region of the country. More shocking, heroin deaths narrowly surpassed deaths from gun violence in the U.S., a tragic grace note to newly released federal data showing an historic surge in tragic fatalities from the widespread abuse of prescription drug painkillers and heroin. The number of overdose deaths involving opioids increased from 28,647 in 2014 to 33,091 in 2015, an 8.9 percent rise, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dec.08 -- Bruin Sports Capital founder and CEO George Pyne discusses TV ratings for National Football League games, slowing growth at ESPN and the new media model for coverage of athletes. He speaks with Scarlet Fu on “What’d You Miss?”

President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to offer U.S. companies a one-time repatriation holiday would bolster domestic liquidity and improve financial flexibility, Moody’s says, but it would likely be ...

Rupert Murdoch may get all of European broadcaster Sky after all after the U.K. phone-hacking scandal scotched a previous effort. Sky said Friday that Murdoch's entertainment conglomerate 21st Century ...

Companies can now test self-driving cars on Michigan public roads without a driver or steering wheel under new laws that could push the state to the forefront of autonomous vehicle development. The package ...

Southwest Airlines has stopped new flights between Los Angeles and Mexico because Mexican authorities haven't finished the paperwork formally authorizing the service. American Airlines has been forced ...

A U.S. agency involved in settlement talks with Volkswagen AG over its diesel emissions scandal has raised concerns about nearly two dozen mobile phones destroyed or lost by the German carmaker. The Federal Trade Commission said in a court filing dated Thursday there were 23 lost or broken mobile phones the FTC was not able to access, the agency said in the filing with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. In November, the FTC said in court documents that it has been investigating since March whether Volkswagen Group of America destroyed documents related to its "Dieselgate" scandal.